TRANSCRIPTION:
HOW TO ATTRACT REFERRALS
The next thing that we need to get lined up is our referral partners. We probably already have these and don’t realise it. I note that a chunk of new signups for the Sales School come from you sales legends who recommend the Sales School platform to your sales manager or your colleagues and friends.
Instead of asking for referrals one at a time, you need to build a system that allows you to get introduced to many people at once.
But to attract more referrals, with less effort and without having to ask for it, we need a different approach. Instead of asking for referrals one at a time, you need to build a system that allows you to get introduced to many people at once. We want your referral partners to be able to introduce you not just to one individual at a time but all of their contacts at once.
Armed with your referral kit and the content in the next couple of videos you can go from getting one or two referrals here and there, to getting dozens of open doors all at once.
So, to start building your list of potential referral partners, start with the people and businesses that your ideal prospects already doing business with or listening to. For example, if you want to get in front of hundreds of thousands of sales professionals, perhaps you’d list me down as the host of the Salesman Podcast.
We’re not looking for our competitors here, obviously, we are looking for the companies that our potential customers buy anything from, anything goes here.
Next, make additional lists about where your ideal prospects spend time and buy from off the clock. Where do they go abroad? Do they play golf? Whatever it is, jot it down.
Each of these lists give us a starting point to finding potential referral partners. Now let’s take a look at the four criteria of a potential insanely profitable referral partner –
- One – are they open to working together? This is an obvious one, if they’re a complete dick head are you going to have to do a lot of convincing to get them on your side? If so then they’re probably not worth bothering with. These individuals are not going to be effective and even more so not someone who can build trust on your behalf by making this referral if you’re not in the good books.
- Two – are they both selling the same people that you want to sell to and have some kind of list or database of these individuals? Then these people can make great quality referral partners. Don’t take a list or database for granted. There are many small and medium-sized businesses where you think they’d be tracking their customers information throughout the years as people change jobs, lose budgets, or leave the industry altogether but a lot of them do not do this.
- Three – do they have expertise that clients will find interesting? This is going to be a two-way street. You need your referral partners to be interesting to your customers in the same way you are gonna be interesting to theirs so that you can both refer each other in the future.
- Four – selfishly, do you like that individual? It’s tiring and grating to work with people that we’re not the biggest fans of. You don’t need to be best friends, you just have to like the other person and believe in what they stand for.
So how do we get them on board with us?
You sell them of course. Cold email, cold calls, an even better referral from another referral partner is the competitive advantage that you have if you’re a member of the Sales School. You get in touch with these potential referral partners and you negotiate, at first anyway, a fair trade. Perhaps they start handing your report out, and you start handing your book to your best customers.
It’s not necessarily the hardest bit to get in touch with these individuals, the hard bit is to build a relationship with them so that they proactively want to refer you on.
